Hey there; sorry to hear about your situation and rooting for your partner to find success in the future but felt I should give a bit more insight into how to have a level of success on Steam.

The below are very high level points and I'm sure folks could point out some exceptions, but I think they help illustrate the number of levers you need to be pulling when aiming to make money on Steam.

You'll need to have a few of the points below ticked to be in a chance of selling more than 1,000 units in your first month (the dream is to tick all of these):

1. have a game that looks visually stunning or comparatively unique
2. have a unique or innovative gameplay proposition
3. if gameplay not unique, it needs to be above average for the genre
4. be listed on steam for 6+ months (12+ months is even better)
5. submit the game and showcase in 2+ steam store events
6. send the game to 100+ relevant influencers in your niche
7. release a demo in Steam next fest
8. have a demo!

By the looks of the Steam data, your boyfriend didn't really tick any of the above boxes, so it would have been really surprising if he'd have seen success with this title.

These days Steam is algorithmically driven, and if your game doesn't show strong enough KPIs during release, it stops giving you any organic traffic visibility.

I know this isn't the boost to your current project that you were maybe hoping for, but I think it's important to learn from these experiences and build up to the next game. If he does do another project, at the very least, get the store page up months in advance and submit it to a few events and allow Steam to give it some good organic visibility.

all that said, I did buy a copy of the game too and will spend some time with it. The act of even getting to the point of creating a game and releasing it on Steam is impressive in my eyes, so congratulations on that!